Samsung Opens Its Mobile Web Browser To Almost Everyone

Samsung has announced that a beta version of its Samsung Internet app is now available for phones running Android 5.0 and above. Not that anyone actually asked for that to happen; or that it’s a particularly good app of which Samsung users have been singing praises about.

The beta for Samsung Internet has been running since March, where it was confined to Google designed phones like the Pixel and Nexus. That should have been more than enough of an indication that Samsung was preparing to reach out to more consumers with its browser.

Getting people to change browsers takes a lot of effort, and it looks like Samsung’s developers have the right idea. There’s a desktop Chrome extension that allows users to sync their bookmarks with Samsung Internet, allowing people to quickly port their favourite sites over.

Samsung Internet isn’t entirely homebrewed by the South Korean company. It’s built using features from Google’s Chromium development programme; although Samsung’s developers were careful to remind people that they also contribute to the open source work.

There’s currently no telling how long Samsung is planning to keep the beta going, but it looks like there’s been a lot of progress. This could be a sign that Samsung is thinking about competing with Google’s apps on more than it’s own Galaxy range of devices. After all, user data is now a very expensive commodity; and it would really help the company to collect as much of it as it can.